Catfish

I just found this out earlier and I don’t know what to think.

My brother is 15 and I’m 19M. He’s kind of shy, doesn’t have that many friends so he spends most of his time online and stuff. Well today my mom took his phone away because he didn’t do his chores at all today by the time she got home and wasn’t allowed to use it til he finished.

My brother begged me to use mine for like an hour because he needed to talk to someone. I was going to workout downstairs anyways so I let him use it. When I got out the shower he left my phone on my bed.

I saw a notification on my screen from my kik but it was someone I didn’t know saying “I love u too”. Then I though he probably left it logged in to his account. But when I went to the app to log out I freaked out cuz I saw a pic of me as his profile. But with his name. I saw he was only messaging with one person and it was some girl.

But looked like they were together online and then earlier he sent her a random selfie of me from when I went hiking saying that’s what he was doing right now. It was so fucking weird.

He was pretending to be me with this chick. I didn’t know what else to except message the girl back telling her idk where they met but it’s definitely not me she been talking to. She thought I was messing around first but I told her I was serious.

We only chatted a little. The girl said she was sorry and she had no idea. I logged out of the account and my brother got a message from her where she basically broke up with him.

He came into my room pissed because I just ruined this for him and it wasn’t a big deal to tell her anything. My brother said he liked her and it’s not like they were gonna meet anyways so didn’t hurt anybody to lie.

So he’s not talking to me because I made her breakup with him and I’m not sure if I was TA for telling her the truth in the end

i've been lurking around on this sub for a while and it just pisses me off whenever i see someone catfishing. i understand that it all eventually boils down to whether you choose to believe that person or not despite them not having the "verified" thing next to their username, but it's still very dangerous.

i'm not sure how well the mods on this sub are doing to catch the catfishes but let's please add this feature so that nobody puts themselves in danger.

another thing that i want to add is maybe making this sub private so that only those who have verified their identity could access so that way the chances of a pedo contacting a minor could lessen.

if my suggestions are eventually decided to be left unconsidered, you as a minor on reddit should take extra precaution. somethings that i do is google reversing the image, which is a very widespread technique amongst many others. in some instances, the picture won't be reversed to any source DESPITE them being a catfish. what you should do is ask for a verification picture of said person. ask them to send you a picture of them holding a paper with their username on it, or something like that. if they refuse or create a cheap excuse like, "oh my phone is dead atm" "reddit doesn't allow me to send pictures", maybe reconsider their validity.

please just be careful. even if this is a sub dedicated for teenagers, there are so many pedophiles lurking around.

edit: i've noticed that some people are downvoting this. instead of downvoting, how about you add suggestions?

edit2: i'm really if i come off as insensitive or anything but i feel like just by verifying your actual identity we could all be safe. if you're shy or insecure about your looks, you could instead verify yourself with the mods, which i'm sure is confidential just among them. i'm not sure if the mods share the verification pictures with anybody else or if the mod team is considered "safe". let's please not overlook this issue.

I want to hear about catfish experiences in SG. Or any other dating app disasters. I've never been catfished but I've gotten the typical hot China chick scam. One even talked to me for 2 days about random crap before springing the 'do you invest in stocks?' line on me. I told her I'm not interested investing and she straight up said "you have to invest if you want us to be together". Lol. I say "she", but it could well have been a guy I guess.

A little late, I know. But the sub seems to be blowing up with posts regarding the episode. Plus, post episode discussions aren't necessarily a bad thing to have. The sub had been somewhat neglected by the mods so we'll make sure post episode discussion threads become a thing! Please keep any posts related to this episode within this thread to avoid filling the sub.

Also changed things up in terms of the design of the subreddit! Hope you guys like :)

Episode Summary:

Paul fell madly in love when he met Caitea on Xbox, but one day Caitea just disappeared; a decade later, Nev and Kamie help Paul find his first love.

we met in a twitter gc back in december 2019, after a couple of weeks we started messaging privately and it kept going every single day we just connected so good & we were falling for each other. on february 2020 we got together and every single month w her has been amazing she really felt like my soulmate no one in my 20 years of life has understood me the way she did, and i was always there for her. we had our up and downs but we always managed to sort things out. we never video chatted bc she said australian wifi is really weak (she’s from australia) so it was hard to connect w someone that’s all the way in the US, i had my doubts but chose to believe her. we still sent each other pictures and videos and still sent each other voice messages. she would send me pics of her nails when she was gonna go get them done and then send me selfies and u could actually see the same nails on her. stuff like that led me to believe she was actually real. anyways last summer she started sending me nudes and i began to reciprocate, we’ve been doing this ever since. tonight i went to xvideos and as i was looking through the comments i saw a familiar pfp, it was some boob pic that looked exactly like one she had sent me before. so i save the pic to compare it, and it’s the same exact one. ab an hour ago i confronted her and she said she was sorry and told me she sent me it bc she didn’t feel comfortable sending actual nudes yet, i told her she could’ve just not sent anything bc i never asked her for nudes. then i sent a message explaining how i’m scared bc she sent me a fake picture and had no problem pretending it was her and that now i wonder if all the pictures she has sent me are actually her. after sending that message i went to check her profile and she deactivated, i went to twitter & tiktok, she deactivated them as well. her leaving like that just tells me that she has been dishonest w me ab her identity this whole time and i fell for it. she was really my bestfriend i was still down to talk ab things and remain friends but she just left. i don’t even know what to feel rn, i dedicated a whole year of my life to this person, i fell in love w this person, i opened up to this person, i trusted this person. she was my oxygen and waking up knowing she was there for me made my days easier, every single time i woke up i was always looking forward to our conversations. i loved her and i believe she genuinely loved me too. i seriously wanna talk to her and know her

https://preview.redd.it/k98c1trrqba61.jpg?width=540&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7fa30df71800534d29921ac1ed2a705c360784fb

backstory: my father lost his job a few years ago and spent his days joining Facebook groups catering to his interests. think music, wine, weed, whatever a hippie stoner dad would be into. i don't know about you guys, but i was raised to believe that strangers on the internet were an absolute no-no. i was literally raised watching MTV's Catfish. He met a girl named (let's call her) Cat and they have been speaking via Facebook messenger and on the phone (no FaceTime, just phone) for a little over a year now.

she admitted to using a fake username and fake images because she supposedly is in the witness protection program. immediately i thought, if this is true...why would she be saying this to a complete stranger on the internet?! i knew my dad was a good guy, but she didn't! she also apparently has terminal cancer, all of her siblings have been murdered(?), and her parents tried to sell her to men starting at the age of 3. i don't know what's worse. if these stories are true, or if she created all of them and my dad FELL IN LOVE WITH THEM.

i know that i am an adult and i'm extremely fortunate to have a supportive extended family, but never in a million years did i think i'd be asking them for assistance as my father plans to move to the other side of the country to be with a woman who he has never seen, who he does not know her real name, and already caught in a lie about her age. my mother was never really in the picture and i am an only child. it's always only been us. i've never felt so unimportant and unloved in my entire life. i would've rather had an evil stepmother.

this has completely changed my perspective on life and love for the absolute worse. i quite literally begged and cried asking what he could possibly be thinking, and his only real response was "when you love someone, you'll understand."

shit. if this is love, i want no fucking part of it.

I'm trying to write more content, so I took the night off from writing code, and wrote my first article of the fantasy season.

Hopefully the concept isn't too weird for people not familiar with the TV show, but I wanted to write something a little different than the standard sit/start/streaming articles.

Catfish or Swish: 7 Players Who Might Be Catfishing You to Start the Fantasy Basketball Season